


i will not ask you

by sleepy_snail



Category: Homestuck
Genre: (maybe), Alternate Universe - Human, F/F, Ghosts, Humanstuck, an endless discussion of death so theres that, graveyards, this is very weird and really ooc ig. the only excuse i have is hozier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-24 18:36:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19729435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepy_snail/pseuds/sleepy_snail
Summary: roxy meets a mysterious girl in a cemetery and finds themself looking for her again and again.





	i will not ask you

**Author's Note:**

> an additional warning for discussions of death, including child death; they constantly talk about dead people and the circumstances in which they died throughout the fic.  
> a less serious warning for: zero capital letters; english being my second language; the fact that the cemeteries ive been to were in russia.
> 
> i have to say that i went for semi-fairy-tale storytelling over roxy's less neutral internal monologue and it kinda shows (and those clash rather weirdly). again, blame hozier (and my childhood obsession with mysterious ladies. i was in fact a lesbian).

you meet her in a graveyard, on a funeral of a friend of a friend; you didn’t know the deceased and wouldn’t come if not for jane, who wanted someone to be there to hold her hand; you still find yourself crying at some point, thinking of how death’s better than anything at bringing people together. that’s been on your mind for a while — the vulnerability and fear of the close presence of death and how people hold on to each other when they feel it. some beautiful shit right there, you guess.

she’s sitting on a small bench of the grave nearby, and when you look at her, she stares back, all curious eyes. she sits there like that throughout the ceremony, shaking her leg as she watches the coffin be put in the ground and buried and people talk and cry. 

your curiosity gets the best of you — when the ceremony ends, you tell your friend to wait for you in the car (she agrees; ah jane, always so nice and so sweet) and stay until everyone’s left and it’s just you and the girl on the bench of the grave nearby; you lean on the fence and you ask her what she’s doing here.

“watching,” she says and smiles at you; you try not to stare at her lips and her deep red lipstick, and raise your gaze to meet her eyes — curious and lively and monolidded, “i saw the procession and i wanted to watch: it’s an old cemetery, funerals are rare here these days”.

like it explains anything.

“it’s a nice graveyard,” she tells you, noticing your confusion, “old and quiet and comfortable. i love it here; it’s peaceful. everyone’s dead, you see”.

“you come here often?” you find yourself asking with a chuckle, but she responds with a serious “very often, yes; when you die a few times, death becomes comfortable; like a home of a sort”, as if not noticing the pick up line (or maybe noticing and just using it as an opportunity to delve into grim bizarre-ness. who knows).

she then tells you about her deaths; how she was born premature and her mother nearly thought of her to be dead; how she almost drowned as an infant; how she was hit by a car as a child; how she nearly died from a flu, got in a series of uncomfortable accidents with her then-friend, clinically died and then clinically died again two years later; how her best friend nearly killed her (“but it wasn’t their fault, they were manipulated”), how her mother planned her funeral many times throughout her life and got grey-haired too early; she tells you stories and you find yourself laughing along, watching her gesticulate excitedly and add more and more details as if it isn’t death at all that she’s talking about, but something mundane and funny and exciting.

“i like funerals,” you find yourself saying at some point, “they bring people together, y’know? like, death’s sad and all, but then everyone comes together? and we’re all afraid and vulnerable and finding comfort in each other? maybe it’s the lonely speaking in me, but that’s some good shit right there”.

“i’m not afraid,” she shrugs, “but i, too, like funerals. they’re fun”.

that’s the creepiest smile you’ve ever seen in your life, and your heart’s beating a little too fast in your chest. oh fuck. 

that’s when jane — g-d bless her soul — calls you, worried and annoyed, asking what you’re doing and how long she’s supposed to wait and other concerned and reasonable questions only jane’s capable of. you have literally no excuse to offer her (“i was talking to an extremely pretty graveyard girl”? “I was having the weirdest and also the best conversation in my life”? “i met a very creepy girl and i think i’m in love”? how to explain this to jane of all people remains a mystery) and so you apologize to her and promise you’ll get to the car in two minutes and hang up. the girl gives you a reassuring smile and tells you it was a pleasure to talk to you, and your hand brushes hers on the fence separating the graves. you didn’t even notice how you ended up standing so close.

oh fuck.

and then you run away.

* * *

you meet her again near a different grave of the same cemetery where you came for reasons that definitely had nothing to do with looking for her. obviously. 

she waves at you and gestures for you to come closer and to sit by her, which is exactly what you do. that’s just because you’re polite, obviously.

she doesn’t ask why you’re here, and for this you couldn't be more thankful; instead, she tells you a story of the people buried here — a few generations of people, apparently, the most recent burial a child (“died at seven, of some illness, exact reasons unclear,” she tells you, “her aunts believe her father killed her, but there’s no proof for that; she loved dragons, drew a lot of those in her notebooks”); there’s a toy dragon sitting near the headstone; you don’t ask, but you do assume it’s her doing.

“there,” she gestures vaguely towards a grave farther to the left, “is buried a woman, a grandmother, beloved, died at ninety-four; i’ve never in my life seen a funeral procession as big and as genuinely sad as that one”.

there’s a certain excitement to the way she says that, but to your question of whether she knows about everyone buried here she snorts and rolls her eyes. “obviously not!” she replies, as if offended, “there are old gravestones no-one visits, there, a little farther from here; they’re extremely old, covered with moss and the only writing on them is in yiddish. I don’t even know yiddish!”

you tell her you don’t either, and she looks at you with sudden sadness in her eyes.

“there aren’t many people to remember them now, are there,” she says, and you sit in quiet for a while.

“i should show you around someday,'' she tells you softly a few minutes later.

“maybe on tuesday at six?” you offer randomly, and she shrugs and agrees.

you feel weird leaving the cemetery that day, almost like you’re missing something.

* * *

the next time you see her is on tuesday at six, and she does show you around as she promised.

she tells you stories — countless stories full of excitement and soft sadness and love so genuine it’s strange to think she has never met any of these people; and as you find yourself mesmerized by her stories, listening curiously as she tells you about that child hit by a car and about her family’s grieving, of that infant who drowned and of how often that grave is visited, she tells you about a few really strange accidents, but mostly about the people who died in them, — you briefly wonder how come she knows so much, but something stops you from asking — and about one of her favorite graves: the old two lovers who had quite a story; they'd been separated by life (relatives, obstacles, even a few natural disasters) so many times it was hard to count, yet they always managed to find each other and reunite, again and again; they died separately, in different countries, one ten years prior to the other; and yet in death, they were again together.

“there’s something poetic in that, don’t you think?” she asks you, and you’re inclined to agree.

you tell her stories too as you both stand for a while near the old lovers’ grave; you start talking about your family, your sister with her psychology books and her writing, her twin brother and the place you rescued him from; talk about their friends jade and john and jump to jane, how she’s so polite and sweet that it’s hilarious, then get from one place to another and find yourself retelling her a dream you once had about being one of the two people to survive the apocalypse (perhaps thinking still about the old lovers and love, fated and not at all), and then jump from topic to topic in your own association game until you return to those you started from: funerals and your sister.

and so you tell her excitedly about the funeral you had for rose’s dead cat jaspers this once; how you organized everything and even sewed him a suit and how your mother supported you, but rose didn’t seem to understand; how the funeral went so great and the poor cat’s memory was cherished; you tell her everything and more and you even get her to laugh a few times, which you’re especially proud of; you then sit together for a while near the old lovers’ grave, talking lazily about the funerals she’s been to and the happy memories you have about your cat, and you feel warm and oh so comfortable when she puts her head on your shoulder. 

you want to ask for her name — it suddenly feels strange that you don’t know it, but she’s talking and it’d be dumb to interrupt her for something so small and sudden; and so you don’t, and so the two of you just talk and talk until it’s late and you need to go home.

she offers a date to meet up this time. 

* * *

the day you meet again, you’ve brought flowers.

you were thinking about the old lovers the other day — she said some relatives of theirs visit the grave, but you weren’t so certain, and they _were_ selling flowers near the cemetery as they usually do, so you went and bought some — who were the old lovers you’ve never met to you stayed uncertain, but it just felt a right thing to do.

“those aren’t for me, i presume,” she smiles, noticing you from near the same grave.

“it’s a shame, i just can’t find anything appropriate here; woulda given to you if i found any,” you smile back.

“really strange!” she returns, “they aren’t that fond of a more cheerful type of a bouquet here, i believe. a shame, truly, i would also buy flowers for you”.

then you leave the flowers on the grave and the two of you talk, falling back into that comfortable sort of conversation you never really thought was a thing; there's something fascinating about death that you rarely have the possibility to discuss, and there's certainly a lot of fascinating things about her, you think, and how easily she navigates such discussions; it's still a little weird — sitting in a cemetery talking about death so easily and comfortably. you kind of love that feeling. 

there’s a question in the back of your mind, on the tip of your tongue, but every time you feel like you’ve found the moment for it, something stops you. 

perhaps, it doesn’t matter much.

* * *

the next time you see her, the two of you sit in your favorite place near the old lovers’ grave and talk just like you did before. 

“aren’t you kinda curious what they think about you out there?” you ask her at some point, gesturing vaguely towards the cemetery entrance, “cuz i sure am. like, do they think i’m a grieving mother? must’ve been SO traumatic losing her child that early, look, she’s still so young, how is she gonna deal with that?”

“or maybe i’m the child? lost my parents! or maybe not parents. i mean, it doesn’t HAVE to be parents. maybe i’m still sad about auntie becca”, you make a hamlet pose, “alas, poor auntie becca! i remember her! she’d always listen to my hyperfixation driven monologues when my mom said she was too busy and rose rolled her eyes AND quoted freud at me. maybe i AM still grieving auntie becca!”

“or maybe it was a friend. maybe we were like really close and all and i was secretly in love with them or something. and i’m like “oh no, how am i gonna tell them” and then boom! accident! they’re dead! and i’m still not over it!”

“or maybe i’m not actually sad about anything. maybe i’m just goth. do i look goth? actually, do i look cemetery appropriate? am i too cheery? can they boot me out for that? should i maybe put on some more black clothes?” you pause for a second, “okay. i’m not goth. if one of us IS goth it’s you, not me.”

“maybe i lost my LOVER. and i’m still big not over it for obvious reasons. like, i was in love with them, wasn’t i. that shit’s serious. so i’m very seriously grieving my lover, secretly expecting them to show up as a ghost and kiss me dramatically. and ghostly. like in a ghost romance movie.”

“are ghost romance movies a thing? anyway, they are now. movies about people who like romancing ghosts. kissing ghosts. fucking ghosts. making love to ghosts very tenderly and all,” you pause, “oh. maybe I’M a ghostfucker? are those a thing? because they should be.”

“they are now,” she tells you, trying very hard not to smile.

it’s quiet and calm in the old cemetery. you two are sitting close on a small bench near the old lovers’ grave, and the flowers you brought the last time you were here are already dying yet still beautiful. you’re trying not to stare at her face, at her lips and her deep red lipstick, and turn your gaze to her eyes, soft and loving and a pretty shade of brown. there’s something comfortable in the silence between you and there’s so little space separating your faces.

she closes it, almost, and asks you very seriously:

“do you understand the implications?”

your faces are so close, too close, and you don’t understand shit. 

“yes,” you say.

“you sure?”

“yes,” you whisper; you _mouth_ , — you’re not sure you’re making any sound at all — this time not lying in the slightest.

“yes,” you mouth, because there’s nothing you’re more sure of, and she kisses you.

she kisses you in the old cemetery, on the small bench near the old lovers’ grave, where the flowers you brought still lay. she kisses you, and you don’t understand any implications, you still don’t know her name, you don’t know what she was asking about, but it doesn’t matter; she kisses you, and, more importantly, you kiss her back. and then, after she breaks the kiss to look at you with concern and worry, you don’t take any concern or worry, and you kiss her again. and again. and again.

and again, and again, and again.

some minutes later — you were busy doing things more important than measuring time, after all — when there’s a space separating you and her again and you’re trying not to stare at her lips again, she grows serious.

“you can ask a question,'' she tells you.

a question. you’re allowed one question, she emphasizes. your brain skips over a thousand of those, as if mocking you: “who are you?”, “did you actually die?”, “what was that i needed to be aware of?”, “how do you know all these people’s stories?”, and so on and so forth.

“what’s your name?” you ask.

the worry in her face turns to surprise and then, something softer.

“ah,” she says with relief and sudden tenderness, “it’s aradia. aradia megido. yours?”

**Author's Note:**

> i have a homestuck-formatted version of roxy's long-ass monologue in the end. it looks better, i promise
> 
> note: i don’t necessarily endorse cemetery makeouts, but sometimes what’s done is done


End file.
